For ten years, he lived as one of them, traveled with them from country to country, shared both their pleasures and their hardships--and came to know them as no one, no outsider, ever has. Here, in this firsthand and highly personal account of an extraordinary people, Yoors tells the real story of the Gypsies' fascinating customs and their neverending struggle to survive as free nomads in a hostile world.

    He shows how tools developed because of significant parallel inventions in ritual, language, and social organization. “It is a stimulating volume, informed both with an enormous range of knowledge and empathetic spirit” (Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York Times). Index; photographs.

    Here are colorful descriptions of deities, creation myths, depictions of death and the afterlife, teachings on the relationship between humanity and the sacred, religious rituals and practices, and prayers and hymns.Mircea Eliade, a recognized pioneer in the systematic study of the history of the world's religions, includes excerpts from the Quran, the Book of the Dead, the Rig Veda, the Bhagavad Gita, the Homeric Hymns, and the Popol Vuh, to name just a few. Oral accounts from Native American, African, Maori, Australian, Aborigine, and other peoples are also included.Here is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the world's religions and myths. In an outstanding collection, Eliade demonstrates humanity's diversity as well as the universal threads that unite us all.

    Lucidly written and richly illustrated, this third edition contains new chapters on the Shekhina.

    Marcel Detienne's starting point is a simple observation: In archaic Greece, three figures -- the diviner, the bard, and the king -- all share the privilege of dispensing truth by virtue of the religious power of divine memory, which provides them with knowledge, both oracular and inspired, of the present, past, and future. Beginning with this definition of the prerational meaning of truth, Detienne proceeds to elaborate the complex conceptual and historical contexts from which emerges the philosophical notion of truth still influencing Western philosophy today.

    Rather, moments and their men," writes Erving Goffman in the introduction to his groundbreaking 1967 Interaction Ritual, a study of face-to-face interaction in natural settings, that class of events which occurs during co-presence and by virtue of co-presence. The ultimate behavioral materials are the glances, gestures, positionings, and verbal statements that people continuously feed into situations, whether intended or not. This is an interesting account of daily social interaction viewed with a new perspective for the logic of our behavior in ordinary circumstances.

    Drawn from primary Malay-language sources, long periods of residence in Malay households, and first-hand interviews, it is required reading for scholars seeking to explain major events in Malay history. A new Preface by the author sets the book in its historical context.

    For years scholars of religion and anthropology have debated the questions: Do these folk beliefs make up a separate religious system? Or is there a subtle merging of supernaturalism and Buddhism, a kind of syncretism? In either case, how exactly does folk religion fit into the overall religious pattern? Melford Spiro's Burmese Supernaturalism has been one of the major works in this debate, both for its position on the "two religions" question and for its arguments concerning the psychological basis of religion.The book begins with an introduction to the study of supernaturalism. The next section of the work covers various types of supernaturalism, including witches, ghost, and demons. Other areas of discussion include supernaturally caused illness and its treatment, the shaman, the exorcist, and the relationship between supernaturalism and Buddhism.In the introduction to this expanded edition Spiro further develops the underlying logic of his argument and evaluates the most recent contributions to the field of the anthropology of religion. Burmese Supernaturalism is an intriguing study and will provide insightful reading for anthropologists, sociologists, theologians, as well as those interested in supernaturalism in Burma (Myanmar) and other cultures.

    

    In these fictional accounts, Ancient Egypt is made accessible, revealed through the eyes of young Her-Bak, candidate for initiation into the Inner Temple.

    Chronicling food-gathering methods, basket weaving, hunting, skinning, and working with rabbit skins, this book serves as an invaluable reference on early Paiute culture. Any inquiring person who has worked with the Native Americans of the West will testify to the difficulties of obtaining the information he seeks. They are an old and proud and reserved race, and acceptance of outsiders is not freely given. In her twenty years of painstaking work with the Northern Paiutes, Margaret Wheat earned that full measure of acceptance. She tells the story of the generation of Native Americans whose lives were changed forever by the arrival of pioneers and prospectors in 1849.

    This book is intended as a core book in human evolution studies, and been greatly expanded to reflect current research data.

    Guyford Stever Food & Nutrition/William Henry Sebrell Giant Molecules/Herman Francis Mark Growth/James Mourilyan Tanner Health & Disease/Rene Jules Dubos Light & Vision Machines/Robert O'Brien Man & Space/Arthur C. Clarke Mathematics/David Bergamini Matter/Ralph Eugene Lapp Planets/Carl Sagan Ships/Edward V. Lewis Sound & Hearing/Stanley Smith Stevens The Body/Alan Edward Nourse The Cell/John E. Pfeiffer The Engineer/C.C. Furnas The Mind/John Rowan Wilson The Physician/Russel V. Lee The Scientist/Henry Margenau Time/Samuel Abraham Goudsmit Water/Luna Bergere Leopold Weather/Phillip D. Thompson Wheels/Wilfred Owen

    

    of Bucharest & at the Univ. of Calcutta with Surendranath Dasgupta. After taking a doctorate in 1933 with a dissertation on yoga, he taught at the Univ. of Bucharest &, after the war, at the Sorbonne in Paris. From '57, he was professor of the history of religions at the Univ. of Chicago. He was at the same time a writer of fiction, appreciated especially in Western Europe, where several of his novels & volumes of short stories appeared in French, German, Spanish & Portuguese. This book is made up of the first two chapters (Part 1) of his From Primitives to Zen: A Thematic Sourcebook of the History of Religions (1967). In his typical fashion, Eliade here has created a well organized sourcebook for the study of comparative mythology & religion. The book is organized by section & includes summaries from various scholars or translations of important mythic texts. Among others, you will find here portions of the Avestas, portions of the Rig Veda & the Uppanishads, various myths of creation from around the world etc. Additionally Homeric hymns, works by Hesiod & even parts of the Koran are included.--Christopher R. Travers